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4 Ways to Better Collaborate With Clients in Sprout

Figuring out methods for better collaboration is an agency pastime. But juggling multiple clients, multiple social accounts and multiple tools tends to make true collaboration tricky to navigate.

No matter the size or structure of your organization, implementing some of these workflows can help you and your agency proactively approach collaboration across multiple channels and touchpoints and will keep you from scrambling to catch up with clients.

1. Using Tasks to Deliver Engagement Opportunities

Many agencies are used to being the “doers”—doing the publishing, the community management, the reporting—but as an agency scales and brings in new business, being the doer for every client isn’t always an option.

To keep the communication strong and maintain a heavy hand in a client’s strategy and engagement, you can assign Tasks within the tool to act as a reminder for new suggestions, trends and opportunities.

For example, if you notice someone is frequently using a client’s branded hashtag, you can nudge the client with a notification in Sprout to say, “Hey, here’s a good opportunity to interact.”

It’s an easy step that lets your clients know you’re right there with them, monitoring their brand’s accounts, seeking out opportunities and providing them with actionable expertise, even in times that you’re unable to be the doer.

2. Take Full Advantage of the Asset Library

The Asset Library really simplifies collaborative publishing. In line with the promise of a collaborative workflow for client and agency, this feature lets you customize the experience of asset management.

Sometimes a client just needs to see what they need to see. So to avoid overwhelming them in the library, apply user permissions and organize assets with tags and filters. Within the Library you can even leave notes about when to use particular images or, perhaps more importantly, warnings for when not to use certain images.

Combined with the Asset Library’s integration with Compose, storing, editing and publishing is seamless.

It’s likely that your client has several Google Drive folders or Dropbox accounts to manage images and design assets. You streamline all that for them by working together to move and store everything in Sprout’s Asset Library.

3. Align on Customer Communication With Tasking

You’re managing the inbox for a client, diligently going through each message and come across one from a disgruntled customer. Whether that message needs a carefully-crafted response or needs to be escalated immediately, the Smart Inbox is equipped to tackle that with both you and the client in mind.

Take advantage of Tasking in instances like these for a more collaborative workflow. Submit problematic social messages to the client as a task to align on healthy, on-brand responses easily.

It’s not lazy to send things to your client, in fact, it automates and streamlines the sometimes tumultuous and lengthy process of manual damage control. Just make sure the client is set up as a user in Sprout so you can Task and include your suggestions for a response. An email with your note will be sent so the client can respond in Sprout themselves or send you back a note with suggestions. The reply will then pop up in Sprout’s conversation history so all communication on the matter is accessible from one spot.

Without fully handing over the wheel, you can ensure you and your client are making decisions together in the tool.

4. Stay Ahead of Client Asks & Showcase Value With Scheduled Reports

Clients seek different things when it comes to reporting. Taking advantage of Sprout’s scheduled, customizable reports makes it easy to continuously meet the unique demands for each and every client.

After building out your social data, quickly and directly share presentation-ready analytics with them using Sprout’s Schedule Delivery functions. Your client will receive an automated email on a cadence you’ve chosen and you can opt to white-label the email and PDF, including their own brand logo(s).

It’s normal to automate processes during particularly hectic times for your agency, but to still have control in an automated process with customization is a real win/win.

To make each report work for you, leverage Message Tags to showcase quantifiable successes. Not only is this action showing your client the types of content that are coming in and how they’re being received, but those tags are reflected in your analytics, allowing you to pull from the Tag Report to hopefully show some great numbers and how social campaigns are performing.

The success of working with clients doesn’t come down to who takes the lead. It’s about building the brand together, consistently and collaboratively. Making a few tweaks here and there within Sprout’s platform to adjust to not only your agency’s needs, but your clients’ needs too, is a big step toward just that.

About Me

Bella Sanderson

Bella Sanderson British born, American by choice.
She worked as journalist in Asia for 15 years, was a NBC Radio Correspondent for Nepal and BBC stringer in HK. In HK, Sanderson studied acupuncture and Chinese medicine with Chinese healer Dr But Chak-kei and tai chi with Martial Arts Master Ha kwok-cheung.